Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK
Merton College, Merton Street, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 4JD.
Proc Biol Sci. 2017 Nov 29;284(1867). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2017.1939.
Animal societies are often structurally complex. How individuals are positioned within the wider social network (i.e. their indirect social connections) has been shown to be repeatable, heritable and related to key life-history variables. Yet, there remains a general lack of understanding surrounding how complex network positions arise, whether they indicate active multifaceted social decisions by individuals, and how natural selection could act on this variation. We use simulations to assess how variation in simple social association rules between individuals can determine their positions within emerging social networks. Our results show that metrics of individuals' indirect connections can be more strongly related to underlying simple social differences than metrics of their dyadic connections. External influences causing network noise (typical of animal social networks) generally inflated these differences. The findings demonstrate that relationships between complex network positions and other behaviours or fitness components do not provide sufficient evidence for the presence, or importance, of complex social behaviours, even if direct network metrics provide less explanatory power than indirect ones. Interestingly however, a plausible and straightforward heritable basis for complex network positions can arise from simple social differences, which in turn creates potential for selection to act on indirect connections.
动物社会通常具有复杂的结构。个体在更广泛的社会网络中的位置（即他们的间接社交关系）已被证明是可重复的、可遗传的，并与关键的生活史变量有关。然而，人们仍然普遍缺乏对复杂网络位置如何产生的理解，它们是否表明个体的积极的多方面的社会决策，以及自然选择如何对此种变异产生作用。我们使用模拟来评估个体之间简单社会关联规则的变化如何决定他们在新兴社交网络中的位置。我们的研究结果表明，个体间接联系的指标与基本的简单社会差异的关系比个体二元联系的指标更紧密。导致网络噪声（典型的动物社交网络）的外部影响通常会放大这些差异。这些发现表明，复杂网络位置与其他行为或适应度成分之间的关系并不能为复杂社会行为的存在或重要性提供充分的证据，即使直接网络指标提供的解释力不如间接网络指标。然而，有趣的是，复杂网络位置可能源于简单的社会差异，并由此产生了对间接联系进行选择的潜力。
